DonnyTJS

You can see why some (I'm assuming) would see this as suspiciously well timed, right on the heels of Trump's proposal to have tooled-up teachers in the classroom. Maybe it's happened before but only makes the news due to current sensitivities. Can't help thinking that if they'd had armed teachers in my day, I'd've been summarily executed before turning sixteen pour encourager les autres.

Pretty common in the States, I believe (was told so by a couple of American girlfriends back in the '80s). Was said to have medical benefits, though I'm not quite sure what those might be. Used to be common here too in the first half of the last century - I believe me dad had been done.

As Scotty says, and I suggested overleaf, it's different for kids (although I reckon some adults are more susceptible to change than others). Whatever the basis for the incredible linguistic acquisition that children possess, it fades on the way to adulthood, and picking up accents is no different.

Are you sure that wasn't down to the cross-dressing? Yeah, the mixed accent is a common phenomenon, I suspect.

British and Canadian then. Top effort. The accent thing always strikes me as a bit weird, just as if a Canadian emigrated to Scotland but ensured that his kids retained a Canadian accent. In practice, I assume most 'first generation' kids actually grow up bi-accentual and slip between the accent of their parents and that of their classmates almost subconsciously depending on the company they're in. My accent certainly gets a bit broader when I'm home.

These seem to be the three main threads archived from the old board if anyone fancies a trip down memory lane: http://tamb.net/archive/index.php?s=b81cc72d1897f19e9f153cc9eb64907f&showtopic=141657 http://tamb.net/archive/index.php?s=b81cc72d1897f19e9f153cc9eb64907f&showtopic=137149 http://tamb.net/archive/index.php?s=b81cc72d1897f19e9f153cc9eb64907f&showtopic=145943

Maybe they're giving him a half each ...

Followed Zamalek for my five-years in Cairo in the 1980s. I see they went through four managers (plus one caretaker) in 2016, and performed even worse the following season. Mcleish was up against Martin Jol (managing Al Ahly, their main rival) for most of his tenure. Edit: Looks like Jol is currently unemployed an' all ...

Thanks, really enjoyed that, despite detesting the team at the time. When Bremner came to Rovers he promised to entice big stars to the club... brought us Mick Bates and Terry Cooper (who'd never recovered from his leg break). Stirred things up a bit for a while though; the bloke had passion.

Tbh it wasn't the work of years but that of an hour or so in the old board archive, but like you I am sadly intrigued by the ebb and flow of board traffic.

Ah well, I've just used my rough-estimate method on the past 31 days (possibly slightly skewed by time-zone differences) and I get a total of 6,018. That would suggest little difference between the past month and the month of May last year. Still, it felt like things continued to decline further between last May and the announcement of the board's closure, so maybe there's a bit of an upturn ...

Well, I'm not sure how useful this is, but I've been making rough estimates (the imperfect methodology is explained here) of posting quantity for the month of May over the past few years: May 2009: 21,292 posts May 2010: 16,895 posts (I think Reeky Sporran might have been suspended) May 2011: 24,602 posts May 2012: 19,106 posts May 2013: 14,696 posts May 2014: 17,434 posts May 2015: 17,943 posts May 2016: 9,505 posts May 2017: 6160 posts Now, we could average Fringo's daily averages (163.5) and multiply by 31 giving us 5,068 but that's hardly fair as there appears to have been a line-of-best-fit rise in posting over the three-month spread of Fringo's analysis. What we need is for someone to take the daily numbers for 31 consecutive days, and Fringo's clearly the man to do it

I learned recently that the phrase 'Survival of the fittest' was not coined by Darwin, but by the social Darwinist Herbert Spencer whose ideas led directly to compulsory sterilization for the socially undesirable in many countries, were used to justify imperialism and the wilder shores of eugenics and arguably to the holocaust. All clunky ways (among other things) of humans trying to control evolutionary processes. Now that we are getting to grips with in vitro gene manipulation we could theoretically have great control over our own evolution - it's only ethics committees that are holding it back. It's hard to imagine an isolated random mutation that would have similar evolutionary significance, beyond a very small island population or similar. Humans have been responsible for unnatural selection for millennia (Darwin's interest in the work of pigeon fanciers and the like was the basis for his theory of natural selection), and unnatural selection hugely outpaces natural selection.

Definitely, but there's a difference between a shit existence and extinction. Hubris or not, I can't see us going the way of the passenger pigeon for a long, long while. It's not a great existence for much of humanity now, and it could easily get a whole lot worse. I'm rather relieved that I'm unlikely to be here in 25 years' time. On the evolution / culture thing. I'm fairly short-sighted. In 'the wild', I'd've been helpless and then dead in short measure. As it is, I can pass on my myopic genes to the next generation with no noticeable evolutionary disadvantage (in fact it has been argued that the ladies find bespectacled men attractive as it connotes intelligence ... a theory generally spread around by bespectacled men).

Yeah, I suppose 'the health of the planet' is fairly meaningless if you exclude the life that exists on it. Interesting point about mega-fauna, but they'd need us out of the way first, and we're more adaptable than just about anything, beyond bacteria. As we've discussed before, I think, Homo sapiens has effectively stepped out of evolutionary processes through our development of culture.

The Japanese are fairly orthodox these days when it comes to the consumption of terrestrial fauna - a cow's a cow, provided it's been fed on caviar and vintage Burgundy. Seafood is a different matter - potentially lethal blowfish, any number of molluscs, and minced jellyfish are all delicacies. Hedgehogs were another popular item on the zoological café menu ... like most of these things, they aren't indigenous to Japan - they import them along with the coffee beans.

Don't know to what extent it's related to emotional support, but the whole pet café thing is big in these parts. Went to one a fortnight back - over-priced coffee served with a dwarf rabbit, or hairless guinea pig (the wife chose that one - the most hideous creature on God's green earth ... not the wife), any number of fat and furry giant gerbil-like critters, a rat or a lizard. I downed a couple of cups of java accompanied by the last two. Don't think I came out of it emotionally buoyed, but it's certainly an interesting way to pass the time.

May not be healthier for the individual (moderation in all things), but I imagine there's a good argument that its healthier for the planet.

You've evidently never had the exhilarating experience of reading a Big Ramy 1314 post.

You are being remarkably, and pointlessly, tenacious about this. What has either his accent or not throwing his hat into the ring for the Scotland job got to do with it? Plenty of Scots on here without an approved accent, and plenty of Scottish managers who would rather hold out for a high-paying league gig if there were a likelihood of one. I can only assume it's because your original post on Allardyce showed that you had no idea about his family background but for some reason you're unwilling to admit that you weren't aware of this ... Now, it should be obvious to even the most fervent Caledonian Buddhist that Allardyce is considerably more Scottish than His Serene Holiness, and yet you persist in denying the fact. Having a Scottish family doesn't necessarily mean that he sees himself as Scottish (although it would be unlikely that he didn't acknowledge it as part of his identity), but in terms of his eligibility that isn't the point. Were Scotland a passport-issuing independent nation, Allardyce would be handed one without a murmur. The thing is, neither you nor anyone else can make a judgement on what nationality someone identifies as. In terms of personal identity, nationality is a state of mind, informed by numerous factors. Humans being human however, we don't live in a homogenous, global utopia so more or less arbitrary rules are imposed, and by almost any of those standards, Allardyce is a Scot, whether he self-identifies as such or not. On a separate issue, I know Buckielugger meant the phrase in a totally harmless sense but 'Scottish blood', or indeed blood of any nationality, is a metaphor that we should consign to the dustbin of history, imho.

Long before that. There were always questions about quite how it could've happened.

Interesting solution, but I think diverting the burn rather than bridging it might make for a more flowing game of football. Your solution would be more akin to Krazy Golf, or Scott Brown bringing out his inner Horatius Cocles.

Interesting idea. I was impressed by what Hearn did with Brisbane Road - though I haven't seen it since final completion. Far better than an edge-of-town flat-pack like Rovers ended up with, though that wasn't really an option for Orient.

Been years for me too, but I'm pretty sure I remember him getting chopped in the 5-a-side and the meeting with Duncan McKenzie (as an aside, remember him clearing a Mini from a standing jump - or am I making that up?). Agree with Toepoke that the book was better, but that's always the case.

I was just saying (needlessly as it turned out as I'd misunderstood CC's point in my rush to get in my Bardsley reference) that a closer analogy to Elvis's famed Scottish credentials, based on his brief stopover at Prestwick, was Phil's gran's inability to sprog on the appointed day. Given Fat Sam's Scottish family, I'd assume he's spent plenty of time over your way.